At The Quick and the Ed, Kevin Carey attempts to take on Diane Ravitch’s criticism of Race to the Top, accusing her of…well, I’m not sure exactly. But his criticism of Ravitch’s take on tying teacher evaluations to test scores is noteworthy.
No state has ever really tied teacher evaluations to test scores in a methodologically valid way and made those evaluations meaningful in terms of compensation, hiring, tenure, and other things people care about. So Ravitch is just engaging in garden variety chicken-and-egg obstructionism: you can’t prove X works because nobody’s ever tried it; you can’t try X because nobody’s ever proved it works.
Well, no. It’s not that it’s never been tried. It’s that there is not a way to evaluate teachers fairly by using test scores. I guess I’m obstructionist too, since like Ravitch I don’t see the benefit of coming to vast conclusions based on half-vast data. Commenter Ceolaf nails the problem precisely:
“It is not merely a case of banning a practice or allowing it. Rather, it is a case of mandating it. Require — or pressuring very strongly — states to adopt policies that are unproven is the issue. We knew that seat belts save lives, so requiring states to adopt seatbelt laws made sense. We knew that lowering speed limits saved gas, so requiring states to lower theirs to 55mph made sense. But that is not the case here.”
Just so. But argue that this well-intentioned idea has too many problems to be taken seriously and you’re immediately a status quo loving, running dog lackey of the teachers unions, or as Carey describes Ravitch, the ”go-to name-brand anti-Obama quote on K–12 issues.”
Oy.
Maybe we can make this simple and unambiguous: Accountability? Good. Figuring out if a teacher is competent or incompetent? Very good. Using tests to determine the difference? Not very good. In fact, not possible. Forcing states to do it anyway? Not very smart. Being incurious about the impact such a move will have on education? Unforgivable.
When did “not very good but it’s the best we can do” become a way of making policy? When did suggesting we can do better become heresy?
